Quality gardening tools are relatively expensive and we want to keep them in good condition for as long as possible. They help us enormously for daily gardening and their maintenance is essential to avoid rust, and also to transmit all kinds of diseases to plants. From secateurs to shovels, here’s how to properly clean your tools in winter to use them the following year…
2 main products to maintain your equipment
For all gardening tools with a metal part, 2 products are effective:
black soap
Almost as old as the world, black soap is not only very useful to remove all the grime on the instrument, but also to eliminate the bacteria transmitted by the plant. In addition, it has insecticidal properties, while being natural.
Linseed oil
For optimal efficiency, use linseed oil from a first cold pressing. Thus it retains its virtues and ensures good cleaning of both metal and wood.
Maintenance of gardening equipment
Among the tools commonly used by gardeners, budding or professional, we find the secateurs, the garden hose and the lawn mower. How to keep them for a long time?
Secateur maintenance
The pruner is used to cut branches that may be contaminated. This is why the ideal is to clean it before taking care of another plant so as not to transmit any diseases to it.
In winter we garden a lot less and we do not necessarily realize that rust is progressing on the metal parts of the equipment.
How to clean your gardening tools?
- Brushing: with a brush or metal straw, the equipment is rubbed to expel all external elements.
- Cleaning: with a clean cloth, apply black soap or linseed oil.
- For tools that are used to cut, such as pruning shears, we take the opportunity to sharpen it. This is all the more important insofar as a well-sharpened pruner does not crush the branch being cut. Necrosis is thus avoided. For this we equip ourselves with a file. This is valid for a pruner but also for a chainsaw for example. And we always file from the inside out.
garden hose maintenance
If you use a garden hose to water plants or lawns, when winter arrives and it is no longer necessary to do so, it must be maintained before it is stored in the garage.
A drain
Thus it is necessary to empty it well and to extend it well so that there is no more water or humidity inside. It prevents the proliferation of fungi and also that the water does not freeze. In this way, the stored pipe will not tear where it is bent, even slightly.
The anti-freeze pipe
Today there is the anti-freeze hose. But the water inside freezes and still damages the pipe.
The lawn mower
The maintenance of the mower is important: we remove all the grass above and also under the hood of course. Even more important for the petrol mower: avoid forgetting to disconnect the anti-parasite, the famous cap located above the spark plug which allows the engine to be started. This prevents the mower from accidentally starting up when children play with it without supervision, in particular… The electric cable is unplugged and stored when it is an electric lawn mower.
Other gardening equipment
The most common tools have been cited. There are others that are also worth maintaining, for the same reasons mentioned above, namely mainly against rust and bacteria. It is therefore also necessary to pay attention to the following equipment:
- The edger: after having used the mower to cut the majority of the surface of the lawn, the edger intervenes to cut stubborn grass in a driveway for example.
- The thermal weeder: this tool is clever because it eradicates all the weeds along a sidewalk, for example, effortlessly. With the help of a flame, it weeds for longer than any stubborn growth.
- The hedge trimmer: A nice, well-trimmed hedge is prettier to look at and the hedge trimmer does the job very well, effortlessly, when you have several meters of hedge to trim.
Storage of garden equipment
Just like domestic accidents, those inherent to garden tools are frequent. Either because they are badly maintained and hurt, or because they are badly stored. What are the rules for storing this equipment?
In height
Parents or grandparents, we inevitably have one day or another the visit of children who love unusual places to snoop around and satisfy their curiosity. It is then that it is strongly advised to hang the tools against a wall, if possible in a closed cupboard, so that they cannot be borrowed by small people such as children. They can even hurt themselves by tripping over sharp tools lying around on the ground, etc… has the best place (don’t forget to remove the anti-parasite if it runs on petrol, or the plug if it’s an electric model).
In a garden shed
If you are lucky enough to own a garden shed, this is the ideal place to store tools. But it is not because they are in a place provided for this purpose that they should be put anyhow on top of each other. Using the interior walls can store a lot of small and medium sized tools. And large equipment is easily transportable without discomfort, without risk of injury.
The rules for maintaining garden equipment are simple but essential if you don’t want to buy new ones every year. After having cleaned them conscientiously, we make sure to store them in a dry place, without humidity.
